Your framework determines everything.
In Doubt We Trust: Cults, religions, and BS in general (Robert Anton Wilson) | The Anarchist Library:
"Each show had at least one galoot remarking that the line between “cult” and “religion” seems fuzzy at best, but each show also had a majority of folks who were quite sure they could distinguish a “cult” from a “religion” by the institution’s degree of “mind control” or “brainwashing.” I think both groups were confused. There are two clear-cut and empirical lines between a “cult” and a “religion”: [a] membership (voters) and [b] bank account, [b] being a function of [a]. If a group has enough members to influence elections, it will also have a large bank account, and these two factors will guarantee that the politicians, the cops and the corporate media will treat it with respect, as a “religion.” With few members and little money, the same group could be called a “cult” and treated accordingly, even to the extent of toasting, roasting and charbroiling, as in Waco.
This line remains obvious and visible to all observers. The only problems arise when people try to draw a less “materialistic,” more metaphysical distinction between one gang of True Believers and another. Materialistic questions can be answered, e.g., “Does that matchbox have any matches left in it?” Metaphysical questions about “mind control” or any other immeasurable “entity” or “essence” cannot be answered, and the best that can be said is that arguing about them has provided a certain amount of intellectual entertainment, or combat, for a few thousand years...
Religions and cults all use the same techniques of brain damage, or “mind control,” i.e. they all instill BS — Belief Systems. BS contradicts both science and ordinary “common sense.” It contradicts science because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: After all, science can only say, “This model — or theory, or interpretation of the data — fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model.” We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week. But BS has an even more total incompatibility with what I loosely called “common sense.” Except when we get dragged into a metaphysical, or ideological, argument, we all know damn well how fallible we are. We know that our sense impressions can mislead us, for instance...
Common sense and/or science require investigation and revision, etc. BS only requires a Rule Book — sacred scripture, Das Kapital or whatever — and a good memory. People with “faith” represent mental health problem #1, because memorizing rule books cuts you off from sensory involvement with the existential world. It also creates the kind of intolerance that produces witch hunts, Inquisitions, purges, Holocausts etc."
"Almost without exception, I’ve found that girls LOVE the movie Pretty Woman. I’ve sat through this thing. Basically the moral of the movie is that a woman deserves a rich handsome man to marry her even though she is LITERALLY A FUCKING WHORE.... But this is the type of movie girls love. It’s not your fault you’re a whore. There are no consequences for being a whore. You still deserve your alpha man...
Movies, television, publishing, basically all media conspires to lie to women and give them false expectations. In real life the Richard Gere character probably already married a babe when he was younger and has a family, or he is enjoying bachelorhood, fucking hot secretaries and would only marry a woman of class, if he ever gets married at all... But understand: These media lies are fed to girls so much and often instilled by their parents as well that it’s almost not their fault. I can’t get mad at girls for stuff like this."
"I have been seeing a pattern in the past several years that makes me wonder if a sizeable portion of the public has become anti-success. The media has pitted the general public against the one-percenters for several years, so that might be a factor. And the bottom-feeders on the Internet (Gawker, Jezebel, etc.) have business models that involve taking celebrity quotes out of context to demonize them. So it would be no surprise if the public disliked successful people more than ever. But I have also lately observed people who seem to reject their own best paths to success in favor of paths that are clearly bad. Let's call those choices "loser choices" because any rational and objective observer would see it that way. I wondered if I was seeing an emerging pattern or an illusion."
"Economists have scratched their heads. "The greatest, most astonishing fact that I am aware of in social science right now is that women have been able to hear the labor market screaming out 'You need more education' and have been able to respond to that, and men have not," MIT's Michael Greenstone told the New York Times. If boys were as rational as their sisters, he implied, they would be staying in school, getting degrees, and going on to buff their Florsheim shoes on weekdays at 7:30 AM. Instead, the rational sex, the proto-homo economicus, is shrugging off school and resigning itself to a life of shelf stocking. Why would that be?
...Hymowitz asserts--with support from economists--that boys and young men, in contrast with their female counterparts, are failing to behave "rationally." That implies a mismatch between the young men's objectives and their actions. But the first half of that equation is left unexplored. Hymowitz (and her economist sources) does not make an empirical inquiry into what young males' objectives are. Instead, she assumes their objectives to be what she thinks they should be.
The real revelation comes in the first paragraph, wherein Hymowitz laments nonelite boys' diminishing "chances . . . of becoming reliable husbands and fathers." To be sure, this columnist is acquainted with any number of men who fit that description, and by and large they report that family life is a source of great happiness. But we can't recall ever hearing such a man describe himself, nor can we imagine one describing himself proudly, as a "reliable" husband or father. Hymowitz would like men to organize their lives around maximizing their usefulness to women and children. Hey, what woman wouldn't? But in invoking H. economicus, she ends up equating the goal of serving others with individual self-interest--an outright inversion of the latter concept...
The source of that confusion is the failure to distinguish between two different frameworks for understanding human behavior: classical economics and reproductive biology. Economists have trouble explaining why males and females behave differently, because their model considers individual "persons" and takes little or no account of sex... Hymowitz's concern with "reliable husbands and fathers," on the other hand, makes sense when you think about the matter in terms of reproductive biology...
Men are instinctively risk-seeking for another reason: because it makes them attractive to women. That serves both their biological interest in reproduction and their self-interest in pursuing sexual pleasure. Women are generally much more risk-averse, because their individual survival and that of their children is biologically crucial. That goes a long way to explaining why today's young women are so well "adapted" to the labor market: For most of them, an education and a good job offer the best hope of a secure future for themselves and their children. In contemporary America, then, girls and young women act in ways that meet with the approval of Hymowitz and her economists, because doing so accords with both economic self-interest and biological instinct. That was once true of boys and young men. It no longer is, because of the same social changes--feminism and sexual liberationism--that transformed the incentives for women.
Hymowitz laments that young males are insufficiently interested in "becoming reliable husbands and fathers." Imagine somebody opening a piece with the converse lament that young females are insufficiently interested in "becoming reliable wives and mothers." The author would be attacked as a misogynist and a dinosaur. Why, critics would demand, should women set their sights so low? Well, why should men? Except perhaps in very conservative communities, men with sufficient social skills can find sex and companionship without need of a matrimonial commitment (and for those who lack social skills, a willingness to marry is unlikely to provide much compensation). The culture's unrelenting message--repeated in Hymowitz's article--is that women are doing fine on their own. If a woman doesn't need a man, there's little reason for him to devote his life to her service. Further, in the age of no-fault divorce, "reliable husbands and fathers" not infrequently find themselves impoverished by child support and restricted by court order from spending time with their children...
Boys and young men are no less rational, or capable of adapting to incentives, than girls and young women are. They are, in fact, adapting very well to the incentives for female power and independence--which inevitably also serve as disincentives to male reliability and self-sacrifice."
"Despite a series of disgraceful dirty tricks, the TSA has lost its case against Dr Rahinah Ibrahim, a Malaysian academic who had been wrongly put on the no-fly list. The DHS engaged in witness tampering (denying Dr Ibrahim and her witnesses access to the courtroom by putting the on the no-fly list) and argued that neither Dr Ibrahim nor her lawyers should be allowed to see the evidence against her (because terrorism)."
Cosplay via mango sirene!
"The differences in earnings stem not from discriminatory employers paying women less for equal work (which has been a federal crime for over 50 years), but from a slew of individual choices. Preferred fields of collegiate study and subsequent occupational opportunities, fewer working hours, and taking time off to raise children are among the variables that lead to differences in income. Economist Steven Horwitz of St. Lawrence University points out that “studies that control for these factors have shown that if you take a man and a woman with the same experience, same education, same job, and compare their salaries, what you find is that women make about 98 percent of what men do.” Time has highlighted that in some areas, women's earnings actually outpace men's. The Washington Post Fact Checker, the American Enterprise Institute, economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth, Carrie Lukas of the Independent Women's Forum, and many others have also addressed various aspects of the gender wage gap myth."
"E! channel is simply a horrible horrible place. If Al Qaeda takes out E!, Obama should sharply warn them they get a pass this time, just don’t touch ESPN or NFL Network or we will drone strike a missile that navigates up your ass and explodes on the cock of the jihadi you’re blowing on the down low. If Joan Rivers, Kelly Osbourne, Chelsea Handler, the Kardashians, Ryan Seacrest, and that creepy looking anorexic hostess who documents every moment of her life disappeared tomorrow, we would go on. But we wouldn’t get Fun Facts, like Michael J. Fox has Parkinson’s, as E! posted on the lower thirds during the Golden Globes red carpet coverage."
"Most feminists claim women who enhance their bodies are a result of male oppression - it’s men forcing them to feel they need to improve their bodies. Just think about what those feminists are saying: male oppression is causing women to want to appear more attractive to men. What!?
Let’s just look at how stupid that really is by thinking about the reverse situation. So a guy decides he wants to pull a hotter level of chicks, so he starts working out, gets a decent haircut, refreshes his wardrobe so it’s finally up to date with that season’s fashion, maybe even gets a better car, starts going to more expensive bars and buying girls drinks. Is this guy just being, well, a normal guy, or is he in fact the sad result of female oppression, making us poor men feel like we have to live up to girl’s ideas of what is attractive? Come on, no one is ever going to argue the latter."
1960s Batman TV Series To Hit DVD This Year - Bleeding Cool Comic Book, Movies and TV News and Rumors: "Conan O’Brien got the scoop, and dropped it on Twitter."
Very excited @WBHomeEnt is releasing the Batman '66 Complete TV Series in 2014! The seat smells like Adam West: http://t.co/cqWjlpW1Gn
— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) January 15, 2014
"An internal investigation by Durham police has concluded that 17-year-old Jesus Huerta somehow shot himself in the head, after he was frisked, as he sat handcuffed in the back of a squad car. That’s quite a feat."
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